Is It Your Job To Protect Employees From Themselves?

// October 13th, 2009 // Internal Communications

There’s some interesting discussion going on (at least in-house where I work) about how far a company should regulate social media usage. I’ve done a lot of research on industry practice and written a couple of position papers for the board on how we should approach this, as I believe it’s firmly attached to our EVP. In my opinion, you can’t support the free exchange of ideas and foster a culture of teamwork and collaboration, then muzzle people who dare to talk about something other than work. And luckily, the board has agreed.

However, this raises another question. We know (from sites such as Lamebook) that people are becoming more likely to share content which reflects badly on either themselves or the company on social networking sites. We’ve all seen the stories of people fired for criticising employers online. Does our duty of care as an employer extend to educating staff on how to protect their online reputations, and by extension, our own?

Honestly, I think progressive organisations should be doing this. Some organisations already are. Preparing employees for their inevitable forays into social networking and online social media interaction is a pre-emptive strike in the reputation wars. Running learning and development programs for employees on how to self-sanitize public content, manage and maintain networks and act as the face of the organisation (where online interaction is part of the business strategy) has no down-side.

Additionally (as highlighted in this article) your organisation is increasingly judged by the sum total of your employees’ reputations and behaviours. If you’re not showing them where the dangers are and how to avoid them, you’re less prepared when trouble comes knocking.